What is Sustainable Development?
April 25, 20162016 is CISV’s Year of Sustainable Development
2016 is CISV’s year for Sustainable Development. Throughout the year, we will bring you ideas, discussion pieces, materials and resources to help you to explore, educate on, and take action toward Sustainable Development in your Chapter or Programme.
Each year, CISV International puts the spotlight on one of our four educational content areas.. This year we focus on Sustainable Development – what is it? How should we understand what it means? How does it connect to Active Global Citizenship? How can we educate and empower people to take action in this area?
Over the course of the year, we’ll be tackling these questions and more, with the aim of getting CISVers around the world to think and talk about Sustainable Development, in their Chapters, in their programmes, and in their communities at large. In other words, in 2016 we hope to give an extra boost to CISVers to educate and inspire action connected to Sustainable Development.
Sustainable Development is not a simple idea. It combines aspects of economic and social well-being, with focus on protecting the environment by using natural resources responsibly. It encompasses a near- infinite number of topics and questions that flow out of the basic problem of “how to meet the needs of the present without compromising the need of future generations to meet their own needs?” (Brundtland 1987)
It’s a problem that touches on topics like natural resources, health and well-being, jobs and industry, wealth and poverty, consumption and production and so much more!
And while it can be a challenging topic to get one’s head around, it’s also incredibly interesting and tremendously important. It’s an area that every Active Global Citizen should be aware of, and able to think critically about.
The team behind this year’s campaign will strive to bring you inspiring and useful resources, ideas that help you put a focus on Sustainable Development throughout 2016. We’ll do that through blog and social media posts that bring together the best materials from within and beyond CISV. We’ll post articles, activities, videos, and links to other organizations doing great work.
In our next post, we’ll dig into the challenge of defining Sustainable Development and give you some tips on learning how to introduce and explain the topic.
Yours,
The Sustainable Development Team*
*The Sustainable Development Team includes members of CISV’s Educational Programmes Committee, Kompaz Project, International Junior Branch Team, Communications Team, and the International Office. Our team coordinator is Madeleine Le Bourdon.
